


Nothing Here to Run From

by kinaesthetique



Series: Satya Vent-Fics [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Multi, Take to the Skies compliant, a kina ventfic with an unambigiously happy ending? it's more likely than you think, get ready for one part of my sad satya headcanons, mentions of aba, reflections on the past and a hint of reparenting/reassuring younger self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 08:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19460200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinaesthetique/pseuds/kinaesthetique
Summary: If being me were easy, everyone would be.No one has ever chosen to be like me.My worth is not separate from who I am.-             -              -On a mission in Australia, Winston sends the trio on a side mission to confront Symmetra's old associates.Things, well... they could have gone better.





	Nothing Here to Run From

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks! This started out as an April vent fic and morphed into a [Take To The Skies](https://archiveofourown.org/series/727083) fic, but it wasn't compatible timeline wise to be inserted into Horizons! You don't really need to read TTTS to understand it, but just know that Satya, Angela, and Fareeha are dating. :)  
> OH, also, Angela has bird wings, LOL. Forgot that.
> 
> Title is from Don't Panic by Coldplay

Hard light is not easy to control.

Very rarely, if ever, will it hurt the user directly. In the end, it is neither fire nor lightning nor magic. Simply light all unto itself. It must be bent, bound, and contained to the owner’s will.

Fortunately, the way that Satya’s brain worked meant that this was an intuitive process. She recognized the patterns where many did not. Whereas many architechs spent years learning to tune into the frequencies of hard light and the meaning of each ripple and fluctuation, Satya adopted hard light like yet another language. 

First, Vishkar had asked her _how_ she had done it. She never had the words for it. She could hear and speak the language of light, smiling brightly when the blue crystals always did exactly what she intended. Her peers, equally as plucked from slums like hers and young with high-plasticity brains, could not keep up.

Satya was invited to attend extra classes, then tutoring sessions. She grew used to the many adults who swarmed to observe her create gorgeous things from nothing but light, thought, and a special glove. 

Satya returned home each holiday full of stories about all she’d learned and what she could do. Her mother always listened carefully, trying to imagine the feats that Satya was not allowed to show outside of Utopaea. Her brothers thought her excitement was unwarranted.

“What’s the good of something you can’t even share?” Adi always said, wiser than his age. Tall, wirey, and wicked smart, Satya always wondered what her life would be like if Vishkar had found more favor in her older brother.

“Not yet,” Satya would insist while doodling geometric patterns in her sketchbook. “One day, we will change the world.”

“Everyone says that,” Krish would shrug and then shove Satya so she’d chase him outside. Krish never had the presence of mind to listen or sit still long enough. Satya has always been glad he had not been chosen. Vishkar would have bored him to tears.

With that, their conversation would end and they would play until suppertime. 

By the time she was ten, Satya knew she was irreplaceable.

Then, Vishkar had asked her to _only_ do that. By then, they had realized what gifts she had and knew they came with certain… caveats. 

Satya was required to attend extra therapy. They taught her to gaze into the eyes of others, keep her hands and arms and legs and fingers still, put her heels on the ground, speak in full proper sentences, and enunciate instead of squeak. 

They punished her when she put her hands over her ears. They punished her when her brain ground to a halt and retreated deep inside of herself. They punished her for outbursts. They punished her for mood swings. They punished her for repeating her words. They punished her for her delicate senses, her callous responses, and lack of tact. 

They slapped a label on her, then told her to get rid of it, as if such a thing were even possible.

“Your autism hinders your progress as an architech.”

It could be defeated, if she just _tried_ _harder._

But the more Vishkar tried to get rid of _her,_ the more her work suffered. Satya focused more on staying still in class than her teacher’s words, more on escaping loud places than networking with her peers, more on trying to get out of extracurriculars so she could avoid the inevitable public meltdown.

Her mother didn’t like the way she looked when she came home, but it was for the best. Satya trusted her teachers and tutors. They _believed_ in her. They’d done research. They knew what worked.

“I want to be the best architech,” Satya would always say when her mother would come into her room, late at night during home visits. “I want to be the best… the best… the best…”

Satya would let her mother hold her and sing as she rocked and babbled, secure with her in the darkness with no one to tell her what she was doing was wrong. There, she was safe.

One day, she would come back and build the grandest of all houses for her family. One day, she would weave a chandelier for her mother's bedroom that would sparkle and shine. One day, she would build a towering library for Adi's endless book collection. One day, she would build a jungle gym for Krish's boundless energy.

One day...

“Satya, we have some very bad news,” said one of the dorm mothers. They sat her down but Satya couldn’t hear much after their initial words. 

_Aditya, Krishna, and Karishma Vaswani._

_Crowding. Building Collapse. Crushed._

_Orphan._

By the time she was fourteen, Satya hadn’t smiled in three years.

Finally, Vishkar had forced her to suppress the caveats, the problems, the anomalies. They were unnecessary, she learned, and unsavory. They were not to be a part of her success or related to it. No one was to know she was flawed. 

Satya hid further and further inside of herself, wracked with grief and fueled by a desire to prevent any further tragedy, as well as an ache for approval. 

Dancing helped- an outlet for the pain and an avenue to further perfection. Gymnastics, ribbon training, dance— preferably kathak—and ice skating were all forms of grace and poise that she used to sharpen her approach to hard light. The dullness that had seeped into her work slowly began to lessen.

Just shy of her Academy graduation ceremony, an offer was made to _officially_ cement her place in the Vishkar Corporation.

“We only offer to the best and the brightest, Satya,” Sanjay had said, grasping her left hand in his right. “Wouldn’t you love to be the perfect architech, ready to change the world at a moment’s notice?”

By the time she was eighteen, Symmetra only had room for perfection.

By the time she was twenty-six, Symmetra had realized that Vishkar was full of shit.

By the time she was twenty-eight, Satya knew that she was loved, not only by herself but by others. 

By the time she was twenty-nine, Satya took pride in wrecking Vishkar’s work and reputation whenever she could, especially when they targeted a vulnerable group for development.

* * *

Symmetra draws in a shallow breath through her nose. Dust can be shielded against, but the hot, dry air of northwest Australia is another thing altogether.

Pharah fires off a volley of rockets at the feet of the offensive architechs, sending them tumbling backward while Mercy buoys and protects her from behind. Up in the air with the hot sun and surrounded by explosions, she can only imagine how hot her partners must be.

Hidden on the ground, Symmetra peers through the view of one of her surveillance turrets. She presses her fingers to the side of her headset and reports, “This is Orange Peel Alpha. We have eyes on an entrance into the encampment. The architechs have begun to retreat. Permission to pursue?”

“Excellent work, Orange Peels,” Winston responds with a hint of amusement in his baritone voice. Symmetra can feel her temple twitch in response to the name. It was a punishment, if a mild one, for being a little too familiar during their last joint mission. “We’re fine over here. Please pursue and check in periodically.”

_In our defense, we were done and we thought our comms were off. And when Fareeha takes off her helmet to kiss you, you don’t exactly turn that down._

Symmetra waves Mercy and Pharah down to her position. Pharah lands heavily, her strength and power evident in every movement. On the other hand, Mercy manages to lands gracefully, buoyed by her wing and knee braces. She lifts her goggles from her face and takes a few breaths. They both nod seriously at her.

“Orange Peel Alpha,” Pharah intones solemnly. Beneath her visor, Symmetra can see the beginnings of a smile. Mercy elbows her in the ribs, which does absolutely nothing because of the Raptora’s excellent armored coverage.

Symmetra rolls her eyes, then presents her tablet to them. “Based on my sentries’ observations, I have constructed a rudimentary floor plan. The architechs likely have taken shelter in this large room here. Assuming they have not made a more tactical retreat...”

“Amazing how Vishkar just thought they could just move in without asking and then got defensive when we asked them to leave.”

Symmetra turns Pharah’s words over in her mind. “That is the Vishkar way.”

“Unsavory,” Mercy says simply. She leans in to examine the plans. “What do you think we should do?”

“We’re only trying to arrest them,” the architech murmurs. “If only to inconvenience them and prevent them from attempting to terrorize this population any further. Vishkar is far from wanted, let alone needed. Moranbah has had its own way of rebuilding after the crisis. They don't seem to be targeting them though.”

“It…” Mercy frowns and looks around the bombed out building around them. “Are you sure?”

Symmetra points at the ground beneath their feet and puts a finger to her lips. “Quite sure.”

When Pharah taps a heel against the burned-linoleum floor in an incredulous gesture, Mercy nudges her once more. Symmetra nods.

“Anyway, we should ensure this site is not further disturbed. The building is a pre-crisis one, with key infrastructure bolstered by hard light." She waves a hand and shows their path in greater detail. "Pharah, it _is_ close quarters. Rockets are not necessary, but a concussive strike would still be good to keep at hand. Mercy, you are more likely to need to use your staff to disarm any architech we come across. I'll lead and keep you abreast of any changes with my sentries and well...”

She hefts her photon gun rather than finishing her sentence.

They both nod in agreement and Symmetra sighs in relief. Such tactical pursuits were a rare venture for her, but working with her girlfriends professionally was as easy as it could be.

She dissipates her tablet and miniature workstation, then waves them after her. Together, they dart across the open area toward the Vishkar base.

Once inside, Symmetra adjusts her visual filter and leads them into the dark hallway.

The smell should have warned her.

Symmetra wrinkles her nose as they move into the building. On her visor, her sentries report nothing out of the ordinary. The building matches up with her plan so far. She drags her free hand along the walls of the building.

“Hey, Sym?” That was the closest Pharah would ever get to a nickname on the field.

“Hm?” 

“You okay there?”

Symmetra blinks and realizes she'd stopped walking. Her photon gun is in the incorrect hand. With her right hand, she pets the drywall absently.

_Oh._

“Do you smell that?” Symmetra asks without addressing the question.

_It smells like smoke and vomit and burning plastic and cooking mushrooms and oxidized copper and-_

_Everything I hate._

“It does smell a bit… odd.” Mercy murmurs. "Like someone threw trash in a compactor and let it sit."

“As long as it’s not explosives!”

Symmetra can hear the grin in Pharah’s words. She sighs and tries to shake the uncomfortable feeling that’s seeping into her bones. She glances behind her at the entrance and then into the dimness ahead. It wasn’t much longer until they’d reach the room and apprehend the unruly architechs. Then this mini-mission would be over.

She adjusts the sensory input on her shields until she can hardly smell it anymore. Shifting her gun back to her right hand, she nods.

“Let’s continue.”

Symmetra takes perhaps only twenty steps forward when a deluge of _something_ drenches her. She winces, grateful for her body shields even moreso. The liquid, which simply appears to be dirty water, slides harmlessly down her skin and clothing without leaving a stain.

“I am fine.” Symmetra shakes her gun off and steps forward again.

A shower of dust and debris falls on her head and she can’t help but shriek a little in surprise as an entire ceiling tile hits her in the head.

“Is this place booby-trapped?” Mercy whispers. Behind her, she can hear her shifting closer.

Pharah doesn’t even snicker. “Sym, do you want me to take the lead?”

“No, it is quite-”

“Still think you're better than everyone?”

Even through her headset, she can recognize that snobbish voice anywhere.

"I have never thought—" Symmetra grits her teeth and taps her headset, cycling through her sentries to find the owner of the voice. "Naveen?"

"Hey, _Vaswani._ I can't believe you left us _and_ made new friends."

Stepping forward, she makes a motion at Mercy and Pharah to tell them to wait a moment. She adjusts her sentries again, trying to find where Naveen is hiding.

"Naveen, you may recall that we… were never _friends._ Your cruelty precluded such an arrangement."

She checks the next small room. Behind her, she hears her teammates tiptoeing after her as she reaches the open ballroom.

She rolls her eyes, turning back to shoo them away, but they're both where she'd left them. However, between them...

To her left, there is a door that wasn't on her floor plan. Not a door, just a door-shaped, dim teleporter portal. Symmetra takes a step back, flinching when something comes flying out of the portal. She tries to bat it away with her free hand but it sticks to her prosthetic.

Then everything goes dark.

Her visor, her headset, her shields, her photon gun, her _arm._ It all shorts out. Her senses flood at once and she breathes in sharply, stumbling backward into the large room.

" _Sym!"_

She swallows, staying perfectly still as she listens to Pharah rush to her. Satya takes a deep breath.

"Do _not_ touch me." Satya tests the movement in her arm. It's restricted, but not completely useless. "The device might affect your suit."

"Nah, it's only for hard light stuff," Naveen admits, so close to Satya's ear that she flinches. Pharah strikes like an angry cobra and she can hear Naveen choking.

"What are you, twelve?" The Raptora pilot growls. "Cheap tricks and low blows? Is that what you have to resort to? You're so weak you can't fight face to face?"

"You're defending her?" Naveen coughs but it turns into weak chuckles. "I bet you don't even know what she's really like. Just wait a few minutes."

Satya can feel her blood running cold. A hand on hers- her natural one- helps ground her. Mercy guides that hand to her own shoulder then begins to work on the device.

"Give her some time without her toys-"

_No. No, no, no. This is not the time-_

"Shut up—" Pharah hisses.

"She's broken. When you don't want her anymore, then what?"

"She's not broken, you snake!"

"I don't know why anyone wants her back—"

"Because you're good at what you do," Mercy murmurs so only Satya can hear. She continues to work on detaching the device from her hand. Satya tries to focus on that instead of the air pressing in on her, the crawling of her skin, the creak of her joints, the thumping of her own pulse in her ears—

"-just because they spent so much time on her but we don't need her!"

"Oh yeah?" From the sound of it, Pharah shoves Naveen against a wall again. "Sounds like someone above you does."

Mercy—no, Angela— places a hand on Satya's cheek and presses their foreheads together. The gesture helps clear her head, gives her something new to focus on as Angela removes the last of the device.

"Jealous," Angela says simply and Satya stares at her in the darkness for a moment. Angela tosses the device ahead of them. It clatters, echoing in the cavernous room.

" _What?"_ Naveen sputters, apparently aware that the quiet declaration was aimed at him.

"They want her back because they don't like her replacement: you. You're trying to prove she's not worth bringing back." Angela chuckles darkly and Satya flushes at the sound. "But in reality, it's Vishkar that doesn't deserve her."

_Why would they even need—_

"She's not even—"

_Korpal..._

"You may keep your place as Korpal's lapdog, Naveen," Satya announces as her kit comes back online. "I assure you, I am no threat to the position." 

"I'm not his lapdog—" 

"Pharah, Mercy. The other architechs have escaped and Naveen is obviously acting alone out of self-interest. I do believe this side mission was an unauthorized diversion, or at best, a waste of our time." She taps her visor's gem and deactivates her sentries. "We should go."

With her visor's low-light vision reactivated Symmetra takes a smidge too much pleasure in watching Pharah drop Naveen like a sack of potatoes.

Pharah regards him for a moment then yanks off his hard light weaving glove.

"Hey!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Is this your _toy_? I thought _you_ didn't need those."

" _Pharah,"_ Symmetra grumbles as she tosses it across the room and catches up with them.

"Just making my point."

She sighs and flinches when Pharah lightly touches her waist. It's meant to be comforting, but it sends a burning sensation skittering across her skin instead.

_Not right now._

Even with the senses of the field heavily muted once more, the damage that was done while her shields were down still has her on edge. Her skin crawls and her head is filled with a wet cottony sensation. She continues to reduce the sensory input until it’s tolerable, which is to say, as low as possible.

They run to the outside, wincing against the sunlight and harsh dry wind. Her comm unit comes back online with a burst of static and Symmetra realizes she hadn't even noticed it was off.

"—rah? Symmetra? Mercy?"

"We're here, Winston," Mercy reports, glancing back to make visual confirmation. "Comms must have been interfered with."

"You've been unresponsive for almost twenty minutes!"

"We ran into trouble-"

"Actually, if you could uh-" Winston starts. Symmetra realizes she's hearing gunfire in the background. "Just put that in the mission report, we could use your support here."

He rattles off a set of coordinates and they're through a teleporter as quick as Symmetra can build one. 

Once in the thick of insurgent and mercenary fire, Symmetra shoves everything down and tries to keep her mind focused on protecting her teammates and not on the shades of her past.

* * *

Satya can barely breathe.

She tilts her head to the side a bit and allows her cheek to fully smoosh against the pillow. That prompts some wiggling from the weight on top of her.

"Okay, are you _absolutely_ positive you're alright?"

"'Reeha, how many times are you going to ask her?"

"Until I'm sure I'm not suffocating her!" Fareeha blows a small raspberry against Satya's cheek and she giggles.

Satya nods. "I'm okay. I promise." 

Angela leans forward and nuzzles her nose with her own, adjusting the wing that covers both her and Fareeha, who's laying on top of Satya. Wrapped tightly in a huge blanket, the pressure is a delightful sensation and only better with the added weight of Fareeha.

"I just don't want to hurt you..."

"I know. You won't. You never have. _I promise_."

They lapse into a comfortable silence. It’s so quiet that Satya almost thinks they’ve fallen asleep.

"It's amazing what you'll confide in people whom you love and trust," she whispers.

Angela snorts, knowing exactly what she's talking about, unsurprisingly. "Amazing indeed. He thought you hadn't told us."

"To be fair," Fareeha pets Satya's hair absently. "Pharah and Mercy aren't dating Symmetra. That’s private information."

"Yeah, Orange Peels don't date," Angela huffs.

"Even if he knew that, he doesn't think I'd ever tell anyone I’m autistic... Vishkar tried to hide that at all costs, but we'd known each other since we first entered the academy.” Satya thinks back to those early days of isolation. “He knows many of my flaws. And how to push my buttons."

"You're _not_ flawed though." Fareeha insists.

"Well, perhaps not due to my being autistic, but I am certainly not flawless."

"Uh-huh," Fareeha doesn't sound convinced. "Name _one_ flaw."

"To start with... my tendency to eat a whole bag of mandarins in one sitting?"

Angela stares at her, mouth open. “You mean last week-? I thought I miscounted how many bags we had!”

Satya bites her lip to keep from laughing. "Apologies. They're just so easy to peel. It was a long day in the dev lab."

"Saty, I can't believe you! "

"Is _that_ why Winston called us Orange Peels?"

Satya just hums, thinking of the long conversation she had with Athena about possibly infusing hard light with pleasant smells while surrounded by boiling beakers of mandarin peels.

_He may have had help with that._

“It’s highly possible.”

“Well, we’re never getting rid of that,” Fareeha giggles. "How much do you want to bet Winston thought we were _'avin' a proper snog'_ for twenty minutes?"

"Lena _will_ kill you, 'Reeha."

"Not before Winston will for us having "improper relations" on mission." Fareeha shifts a bit and Satya lets her eyes slip shut in bliss.

_Perfection._

"He knows better than that." Angela kisses Satya's nose. "He knows we wouldn't."

"I don't know. Does he? He does an awful lot of complaining for someone who always puts us all on the same missions."

"He did that before we started dating," mumbles Satya, savoring the fuzzy feeling that the pressure creates from her skin down to her bones. 

"Well, we make a very good team, on and off of the field." Angela shrugs as much as she can laying down with her wings outstretched. Fareeha hums in agreement.

"I feel less scattered now. More put together.” Satya squirms and Fareeha slides off immediately. She struggles out of the blanket burrito, gratified when they both refrain from helping her as she emerges, as always. “Thank you both.”

“Anytime, but I have to know: are you put together enough to help me beat Ange in Scrabble?”

Angela doesn’t react, save for a slow, challenging smile spreading across her face.

Satya leans over to kiss each of them on the forehead. “One game, then you’ll be on your own.”

* * *

_Satya pauses in front of the door at the end of the hall. The crisp white walls are adorned with framed blueprints and informational fliers. She doesn’t pay attention to them. Her thumbprint allows her access and she steps into a maelstrom._

_An adolescent girl, the only occupant of the room, throws books, pillows, vases, and papers across the room. She destroys indiscriminately, scratching herself with her nails and screaming in agony. Her face is already marred with welts and tear tracks. She doesn’t seem to notice Satya._

_Satya knows what triggered this. As she returned to her room, she’d stepped on a thin hard light stylus. It snapped underfoot like a gunshot, like ice cracking, like-_

_A key beam in a collapsing building._

_Satya waits patiently until the girl is a tight ball in the middle of the chaos, rocking and crying hoarsely. In a few minutes, orderlies who don’t understand her will come to take her to the quiet room. It won’t help. It never does._

_Satya kneels in front of the girl and gently tucks her hair behind her ears so she can look into her own face._

_“Hello beautiful,” Satya whispers, knowing she can’t be heard for multiple reasons. She pauses, not even sure how to begin. She takes a deep breath and wipes the tears from her tiny, scratched cheeks._

_“Did you know that you’ll find a family again?” Satya starts, trying not to cry herself. “It won’t be Mummy and Adi and Krish but they’ll love you and you'll love them. You will find someone who likes you for you are. You will meet quite a few people actually. You must keep going though-”_

_Satya hears the door open behind her and places a hurried kiss on her younger self’s forehead._

_She actually looks up at the gesture and for a second, Satya thinks she’s looking at the orderlies, but she meets her gaze- well, almost, it’s slightly off-center._

_“Do you promise?” asks twelve-year-old Satya in a hushed whisper._

_“I promise,” Satya says as the orderlies carry her younger self out, kicking, biting and screaming-_

Satya wakes with a sob trapped in her throat even before she even opens her eyes. She can feel the tears running down her cheeks, but she can also feel Fareeha’s arm over her side and see Angela sprawled out next to them both.

The ceiling fan spins lazily above them, its low hum nearly drowned out by Angela's intermittent snoring. Outside the window, the ocean sings, soothing her aching heart.

Careful to not wake either girlfriend, Satya wipes her face, breathes with the sound of the waves, and goes back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> hi im kina and i like to make myself cry.  
> feel free to yell at me if i made you cry too.


End file.
